Portable electronic devices are ubiquitous in society. For example, electronic devices such as telephones, computers, radios and televisions have all evolved from comparatively large stationary devices that connected to alternating current (AC) power in the home or office to increasingly smaller portable devices adapted to operate on direct current (DC) power that is normally connected directly to the device. Often, the DC power source is a battery that can be charged and recharged repeatedly for reuse. The ability to recharge the battery is both economically and environmentally beneficial.
Power supplies are devices adapted to convert an AC input to a DC output. For example, power supplies are used to recharge batteries as well as to allow devices that operate on DC power to be connected to an AC source, such as a wall plug in a home or office.
In a typical application, the AC-DC converter provides output current or power to the load. For example, the power to the load may be to charge a battery in the electronic device, the power for operation of the portable electronic device, or both.
The power delivered to the output is delivered from the AC input through a rectifier initially. A storage capacitor is provided in the AC-DC converter circuit to store energy during the input voltage periodic cycle, filter the rectified voltage, and prevent the voltage waveform from the rectifier from falling below the threshold voltage necessary to deliver the power to the rest of the AC-DC power converter and ultimately to the output load. Without the energy storage capacitor to hold the rectified voltage, the rectified voltage waveform would consist of rectified half wave sinusoids and the voltage would consistently fall below the threshold voltage.
The energy stored on the energy storage capacitor is proportional to the capacitance times the square of the voltage stored on the capacitor. Power delivered to the output is the first derivative with respect to time of the energy delivered to the output. Typically, the capacitor size is proportional to the output power requirement and to the time interval during which the capacitor is not being charged during the half cycles of the low frequency AC line current. The capacitor must maintain voltage to the load during the ‘falling’ half portion of this half wave rectified voltage signal. In many applications the AC line voltage is at frequencies of 50 Hz and 60 Hz, and the half-wave rectified voltages are 100 Hz and 120 Hz, respectively. As such, the capacitor must maintain the voltage for about half of the period of a 120 Hz signal, which equates to a time interval of about 4.2 milliseconds.
Notably, during the falling half portion of the rectified voltage signal, the voltage drops over time. This voltage drop is referred to as voltage ‘droop.’ In order to maintain the voltage output to the load above the threshold, the magnitude of the droop is controlled over the half-period. In known circuits, the magnitude of the voltage droop is maintained at an acceptable level by providing an energy storage capacitor with a relatively large capacitance. In addition, the power requirements of the energy storage capacitor are rather large in many known applications. Relatively large capacitance, or relatively large power requirements, or both, can result in a dimensionally large capacitor needed in the AC-DC power converter circuit. With the ever-decreasing size of electronic devices, dimensionally large electronic components are undesirable.
What is needed, therefore, is an AC-DC power converter circuit that overcomes at least the shortcomings of known power supplies described above.